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Mysterious nocturnal rumble plaguing Windsor residents

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a low bass note, like a synthesizer. The reports have really spiked recently. This is a very serious matter and we don&rsquo;t know the health effects from it.&rdquo;

By Lesley Ciarula TaylorStaff Reporter

Thu., Aug. 18, 2011

A mysterious rattling and humming that has shaken people living in southwest Windsor is spreading and getting worse, but authorities are still baffled about its source.

“In one house, we put a glass of water on the floor and you could see the ripples,” city Councillor Al Maghnieh told the Star on Thursday. “You could put your hand on the siding outside the house and feel the vibration.”

From a few complaints in February, Maghnieh has now heard from 1,000 people in his ward in the south and west of the city — including his own neighbours on Everts Ave. The worst time for the rumblings is between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

“These are not people looking for attention. They’re reporting sleepless nights.”

Blasting, officials said, is confined to weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Detroit Salt’s George Davis said that, unlike the Ojibway mine, the Detroit miners no longer use drilling and blasting and their second shift ends by early evening.

People in Detroit have reported similar unexplained shaking and humming, Kate Jordan of the Ministry of the Environment said Thursday.

“We want to find the source of the vibrations,” she said. “We’re working with other provincial agencies and our counterparts in Michigan. We haven’t found any evidence in Ontario.”

The Ministry of the Environment ruled out the salt mines on the Ontario side because “their operations are not coinciding with the times people are feeling these” vibrations, Teri Gilbert, issues project co-ordinator for the Windsor office, told theWindsor Starin the spring.

Wind turbines also have been struck off the list, said Earthquakes Canada’s Allison Bent, because they’re in a rural area outside of town. These unexplained sounds and shaking are concentrated in west Windsor.

Earthquake Canada sunk five ultra-sensitive seismic monitors around the city in June and seismologists are just getting the data back now for analysis.

“Enough people have heard it that is has to be something,” said Bent, a seismologist. “It can last on and off for hours.”

The shaking “is definitely not” an earthquake, she said. They would have picked that up even before June.

The federal monitors, however, will only pick up underground disturbances. If it’s above ground, she said, they might not.

Maghnieh speculated that construction of a major roadway linking Highway 401 directly with U.S. Interstate 75 and creating a new border crossing could be the source or the heavy industry operating on Zug Island, a heavily industrialized area south of Detroit.

“It’s like a low bass note, like a synthesizer,” he said. “The reports have really spiked recently. This is a very serious matter and we don’t know the health effects from it.”

Toronto architect Scott Weir, who grew up in a south Windsor salt-mining family and has a contract with Windsor for restoration work, believed a combination of effects is responsible. “The salt mines. And at that end of town, there is a lot of reclaimed land and a lot of quicksand in LaSalle. My sense is there are tunnels that go for miles. And everything in Windsor goes 24 hours a day.”

He was dubious about Zug Island, south of Detroit and across the river from Ojibway. “You can see what’s going on there.”

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